In our present political atmosphere it is assumed that everybody must be on one of only two sides, liberal or conservative, left or right. There is this belief that there are only two ways to look at every issue in the world, and there is no compromise, no listening, no trust, no quarter. The other is the enemy, not to be pitied or heard.
It doesn’t seem to matter that neither of these two labels signifies much in the way of depth or freedom of thought or individual thinking, which is, to me, the cornerstone of liberty. Neither label can claim absolute truth or honesty or intelligence, and both seem paralyzed in the face of so many complex issues that face the world. They seem to exist mostly to stand in opposition to one another and create the illusion for a stupefied people that they have real choices.
What a mess they both have made of things.
I am quite proud to refuse to label myself or accept the labeling of myself by others.
Like any person who likes to think for him or herself, I get messages every day accusing me of being a liberal, or a conservative each writer convinced he knows better than me who I am and what I am. it is like I am being accused of a crime.
It is uncomfortable to be caught in this middle, I feel claustrophobic and am suffocating.
It sometimes feels that I am in some Kafkaesque nightmare where free and personal thought is simply no longer tolerated or acceptable. We are in the Coliseum, we have to fight one another while the crowds roar in front of their screens..
In our world, how you vote is who you are and everyone feels obliged to define you. Perhaps that’s why there seem to be no revered. great thinkers running around in America any longer, their minds are just too big for two small and petrified schools of though, they can’t really be tolerated.
And no one can pass all of the litmus tests of dogma.
I want something new. I need something new.
If you read the news, it’s all bad.
If you look around, there is a great deal of good, a great awakening, away from Washington and the media, I see it and hear it all the time, every day.
You will never see it on their news, which seems bent on dividing us and keeping us apart. The know that if we ever really all get together, they are done. The comedian was right, the real scandal is that they pretend to hate each other, when in truth, they are happy to use each other to line their pockets.
In my work with refugees and the Mansion residents, I find myself marching along with an Army Of Good, people from all across the country, left and right, whose primary ideology is kindness and empathy, two values the left and the right have left out of their policy platforms and never seem to mention.
Recently, I have begun following the preaching of the Rev. William Barber, a pastor from North Carolina calling for a new era of moral transformation. He is suddenly very popular.
He is, more and more, being compared to Dr. Martin Luther King and his very famous Poor People’s campaign. Like King, the Rev. Barber is eloquent, fearless and committed to helping people, even as he decries governments that seem to care nothing for people, or most people. He is sparking a new Poor People’s Campaign, a national moral revival of empathy and compassion.
He has King’s moral clarity – it is about what is right, not what is most profitable – that is so rare and so exciting.
He doesn’t talk in the stifling language of the left or the right, he talks about the cruelty and greed in a system that hurts the people, leaves them to die without health care, remain mired in poverty, and which will not lift a finger or spell a dollar to help the poor and vulnerable. That is a moral issue, he preaches, not a policy argument between the left and the right. This in a country spending billions of dollars for new “stealth” jet fighters to make and sell to a world awash in guns.
The Rev. Farmer is quite the radical, he thinks government should be helping to lift the poor, and that every sick person should have access to health care. He is leading this movement for a moral revival, and he has millions of people marching along with him, black and white, Christian and Jew and Muslim, just like Dr. King had. He seems to be rising rapidly.
When I peer outside of the friendly confines of my farm, I see an adolescent and narcissistic culture of wishful thinking, eternal arguments, debates about policy, and absolute positions.
If you follow the ideologues of the left and right, you come to see they are much more alike than either side would like us to believe, they require or demonstrate no knowledge, little regard for facts or truth or science, no effort, no cost, no bewilderment, no hesitation, no hard and painful moral choices.
One woman I know well messaged me smugly that she was fighting for justice, every day, she even put up a Facebook page. Otherwise, she didn’t seem to leave the house, she said she had no choice, she was too busy.
Between these two warring moralities fighting for political dominance, the middle ground is so battered and bewildered – this was until recently the space most Americans and communities occupied – that there is almost no middle ground at all.
I am caught in this foggy space and the walls are closing in.
I see two cultures that seem almost equally willing to disagreed the truth of human suffering and the very thought of compassion. In an overwhelmingly Christian country, we seem to have lost touch with the founder of the largest faith, Jesus Christ. If there was one continuous and compelling narrative in Christ’s life, from his first sermon to his last, it was to reach out to people in their great need and try to help and heal them.
In the Gospels the soulfulness of all humans is profound and assumed. It was their needs that had to be addressed. I now see needy people almost every day, they cry out for mercy and justice.
Jesus’s ministry was to the needy, and neediest always took precedence over sin.
His kindness was not qualified or restricted, there was no label or moral or political test for the vulnerable, no work requirement or derision, no character tests.
From the earliest Christians, there was this idea of great kindness – the binding together of the earth and all living things, human, plant, animals, the water and the air. We were to be stewards of Mother Earth, her caretaker and protector. That would be a wonderful idea for a moral revival. I’m in.
“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other…” Ephesians 4:32.
Gulping for air in the middle where I live and breathe, praying the walls don’t come any closer, despairing sometimes that they will, I do see a new way, a new moral crusade for kindness, a new way of looking at the world that would bring much happiness, joy and good feeling.
How wonderful to be freed of the evil pleasure of despising other people and ideas.
I see bright lights at the end of the tunnel. Our two warring ideologies are fading, overwhelmed by change and need. I hear footsteps of the new centurions, marching towards us.
“This is my simple religion,” said the Dalai Lama. “there is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
I can join that religion.
